Social Media Sponsorship: Metrics for Finding the Right Content Creator-Sponsor Matches

60 Pages Posted: 5 Dec 2019 Last revised: 11 Apr 2025

See all articles by Shahryar Doosti

Shahryar Doosti

Chapman University - George Argyros School of Business & Economics

Stephanie Lee

University of Washington - Michael G. Foster School of Business

Yong Tan

University of Washington - Michael G. Foster School of Business

Date Written: November 19, 2019

Abstract

Social media video sponsorship, where sponsors partner with content creators to promote their brands, has become increasingly popular. Leveraging rich data on sponsored and non-sponsored videos on Facebook, we introduce two metrics, Content Similarity and Audience Closeness, to help sponsors find effective creator-sponsor matches. Content Similarity captures the thematic alignment between a creator’s content and a sponsor’s brand, while Audience Closeness measures how closely aligned a creator’s and sponsor’s audiences are within a social media network. We find that both metrics significantly increase video viewership, but their effects vary over time. Audience Closeness generates more immediate, short-term engagement, while Content Similarity drives sustained, long-term engagement. We additionally examine how congruency metrics can complement other sponsorship strategies, including partnering with more established creators, forming new partnerships, and managing the sponsor's visibility within content. Our findings suggest that Content Similarity can mitigate the negative effects of frequent sponsor appearances and enhance viewer engagement even in repetitive partnerships. Moreover, we find that Audience Closeness is particularly beneficial for larger, more established creators, while Content Similarity is less sensitive to the size of a creator’s following. Finally, we demonstrate how intermediary platforms can adopt these metrics to reduce information asymmetry and improve creator-sponsor matching, especially for long-tail creators and smaller brands.

Keywords: Social Media Video Sponsorship; Content Creator; Sponsor; Sponsorship Relevance; Natural Language Processing; Latent Dirichlet Allocation; Machine Learning; Matrix Completion, influencer marketing, video content analysis, sponsorship relevance

JEL Classification: M31; M37

Suggested Citation

Doosti, Shahryar and Lee, Stephanie and Tan, Yong, Social Media Sponsorship: Metrics for Finding the Right Content Creator-Sponsor Matches (November 19, 2019). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3490327 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3490327

Shahryar Doosti

Chapman University - George Argyros School of Business & Economics ( email )

One University Dr.
Orange, CA 92866
United States

HOME PAGE: http://www.sdoosti.com

Stephanie Lee (Contact Author)

University of Washington - Michael G. Foster School of Business ( email )

Box 353200
Seattle, WA 98195-3200
United States

Yong Tan

University of Washington - Michael G. Foster School of Business ( email )

Box 353226
Seattle, WA 98195-3226
United States

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